If you, like me, live in the EU, Facebook is now entirely clamping down and forcing free users to make their personal data available for monetization.
Attempting to access any Facebook domain and perhaps also other meta products will redirect you to the following prompt with a choice between either accepting the monetization of your user data, or coughing up a region-dependent monthly subscription fee: base (for me ~10€) + an additional fee (~7€) for each additional facebook or instagram account you have.
Now, the hidden third option. At an initial glance, it seems like there is no other option but to click one of the buttons - however, certain links still work, and grant access to important pieces of functionality through your web browser.
If anyone has information to add regarding Facebook or Instagram, please do share it. I’ve only (begrudgingly) used the former up until now, but I know many others use Instagram and don’t feel like giving a single cent (nor their personal info) to Meta.
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https://www.facebook.com/dyi - perhaps most important of all, now is a good time to make a request to download your Facebook data. Don’t forget to switch to data for “all time” and “high quality” if you intend to permanently delete your account.
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https://www.facebook.com/your_information - here you can find and manage your information, but crucially also access Facebook messenger.
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The messenger app: Still hasn’t prompted me with anything, though I expect that will change in the not too far future.
Currently my plan is to use messenger to inform any important friends that I intend to leave FB, and where they’ll be able to reach me in the future.
The real question, in EU, is not Facebook (or even Instagram). It’s WhatsApp. Business talk with WhatsApp, family talk with WhatsApp, meet a person in a bar? Yep WhatsApp or you are the weirdo
As soon I got the banners, I uninstalled the app and switched to friendly. Not sure if I have such luxury with WhatsApp…. Maybe time to explore matrix? 🤷
I would love to ditch WhatsApp, but then I wouldn’t be in touch with my family half as much, and it would be a lot more difficult to get anything done.
I am in Spain where people simply assume you have WA, and the majority of small business use it extensively.
Remind those businesses that if they don’t have explicit consent from the people saved in their contacts, they are violating article 44 of the GDPR.
Same if their websites use Google Analytics without asking for consent first.
What can facebook really gather from whatsapp? Asfaik messages are encrypted, and other than that I’m not really giving info to whatsapp, like my estado and date of birth but that’s pretty much it.
Like I get it from facebook, you are constantly looking things up that can tell what u like, hobbies, or political affiliation, but whatsapp?
They’re “encrypted” meaning they claim so and nobody was able to prove otherwise.
Even assuming they really are encrypted end-to-end, the app can still spy on you directly on your phone. It has access to all your conversation history and everything you type. 😊
Now, I’m not saying they’re sending that verbatim to Facebook but it’s enough to get the gist of a conversation. Like, that you were talking about hair products. That’s enough to be able to sell some ads to you and your conversation partner.
WhatsApp is truly end-to-end encrypted using the signal protocol. The same protocol Signal uses (believe it or not). Meta truly cannot read your messages. But they CAN see who you are messaging, how often you message them, when you are messaging them, where you are when you message them, and plenty more. They can collect metadata. Metadata is the data they actually care about. Honestly, it doesn’t matter as much if you’re asking your friend if they want to hang or sending nudes. The metadata is what they want, and it’s exactly what they’re collecting.
Just because it is end to end encryption, doesn’t mean one of those ends can’t send those messages to Facebook (also end-to-end encrypted).
Assuming they didn’t pervert the signal protocol, then they really really cannot access your messages, even if they wanted to. The encryption key would only be stored on the local device. Though, it would honestly benefit them to actually do this. They then cannot provide user data to law enforcement no matter how many warrants there are, they cannot be susceptible to rogue employees stealing the information, and the list goes on. And like I said, they really don’t need to know what your messages say. They get all the information they want from the metadata.
hmmm got it, might be intrtrsting to do an experiment where u look up your facebook feed, see what products u get ads for, yhrn talk with a friend over on whatsapp about a certain product or typr of product u want to buy, and then check if u start getting ads for said product
It has happened to me.
r u sure u only talked/mentioned it through whatsapp, and didn’t do any prior or post searches of related things in a browser?
just saying cause it’ easy to miss
Positive.
WA is also owned by Meta, and was only being used by my privacy-oriented friends. We swapped it for Signal pretty much instantly when the news came, but getting others to move over has been a slow fight.
Yeah… the result is that now I have WhatsApp, signal, telegram. 99% of my contacts are on WhatsApp, maybe 20% are on telegram (and a number of group chat are there) and 1% take it or leave it has signal (and no group chat).
In practice the only one I can get rid of is signal (that is also the one I would like better 🙄🙄)
Matrix is pretty good! I use Element. It’s pretty much as usable as anything else I’ve used for similar purposes: Discord, Slack, Messenger, etc.
Hard part is obviously getting people to switch over. But it’s ready for normies!
The ElementX developemnt is looking really really good!
I was more thinking about using the matrix <> WhatsApp bridge for avoiding the pop up. It’s impossible to migrate people (especially strangers)